April 1, 2025 - Election Day in WI/FL, 4 Days to Hands Off

Ways to help, plus the Medicaid killer budget is back, a spike in health insurance prices coming, and more

Apr 01, 2025

Contact all members of Congress:
By phone: (202) 224-3121
By email: Congress.gov
By US mail: Representatives / Senators
By fax: Representatives / Senators
By Resistbot: Resist.bot
Contact White House or other federal agencies:
usa.gov/federal-agencies

If you have questions, comments, and especially submissions for actions, please email us at roganslisttips@gmail.com!

WISCONSIN AND FLORIDA CAST THEIR BALLOTS

It’s an old campaign cliché: “the only poll that counts is the one they take on Election Day.” Today, voters will decide who controls the Wisconsin Supreme Court and fill two vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida – and Trump and Musk will get their report card. Elon has gone as far as claiming Wisconsin will “affect the entire destiny of humanity.” We can squeeze in a few final calls for Judge Susan Crawford in Wisconsin here, Josh Weil in the Florida Sixth here and Gay Valimont in the Florida First here. Then we can follow Decision Desk HQ to see the results as they come in here.

GETTING SET FOR THE BIGGEST MASS MOBILIZATION YET - HANDS OFF SATURDAY

Hands Off! Mass Mobilization We must stop Trump and Musk’s illegal, billionaire power grab Saturday April 5 Hands Off Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Our Jobs, Our Wallets, Our Bodies, Fair Elections, Personal Data, Public Lands, Veteran Services, Cancer Research, NATO, Consumer Protections, Clean Air, Clean Energy, Schools, Libraries, free Speech, LGBTQ+ RIGHTS, Immigrants, Courts, More

We’re now just four days away from progressives, supporters of democracy and opponents of oligarchs nationwide coming together in the streets for a gigantic mass mobilization: the Hands Off national day of action. There are more than 1,000 separate rallies and marches scheduled across the country – so wherever we are, there’s one near us. Commentators and politicians will be closely watching to see how strong our movement is, and this is a great opportunity to wake up those still sleeping on what Trump and Musk are doing to us. Let’s do our part to make it a success:

Ahead of the mobilization, movement leaders, experts and organizers are coming together for a mass call in support TONIGHT at 8PM Eastern. They’ll be updating us on the power grab, what’s being done to fight back, and how we can help on Saturday and beyond. We can sign up to join here.
MoveOn is sponsoring online de-escalation training TOMORROW at 8PM Eastern, teaching folks how to recognize escalating behavior, respond calmly, and diffuse potential conflicts – with opposition groups, bystanders or law enforcement – and still stay aligned with our event goals. This will help us ensure everyone stays safe and MAGA can’t hijack our narrative. We can sign up here.
There’s plenty we can do to build the crowd in our online networks! The Hands Off coalition has asked folks to record short videos about why we’re going out to protest to post on social media – we can make one of our own, post them on our profiles and share them with the coalition at bit.ly/April5socials. We can also use sample posts from the official social media toolkit or these graphics and images.
Offline, this set of images is easy to download and print out (look for the down arrow with the curved line under it!) – we can then write in the time and place of our local rally, and put them up as flyers on public bulletin boards or hand them out!
The most effective asks are face-to-face with people we know. Let’s each make sure to ask at least ONE person who might not otherwise attend to come to a 4/5 protest near us!

REPUBLICANS TRY MAGIC TRICKS TO GET BUDGET THROUGH SENATE

This may be a significant week in Republican efforts to pass the MAGA steal-for-the-rich budget, which would devastate Medicaid and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. They have come up with magic tricks to temporarily end-run two big obstacles – instead of drawing up with a blueprint Senate and House Republicans can agree on, they want to pass different instructions for each house, and instead of accounting for the deficit explosion they are setting off they want to declare that extending Trump’s last tax scam costs us nothing because it’s just the “current policy baseline”.

At this point, it is unclear if they’ll get away with either. Letting the Senate refuse to commit to the same deep cuts the House did is just kicking the can down the road and might anger the far right, and the Senate parliamentarian may reject John Thune’s gimmick. If they get the all-clear, however, we could see votes to start moving a “compromise” budget resolution in the Senate this week.

Here’s some new ways we can help:

Call our senators and tell them we see through the games and want them to vote no. We can find base scripts and language from Indivisible here and here. We can supplement with details on the direct cost of the cuts state-by-state from Fair Share America here and how many jobs they’ll kill from state to state from The Commonwealth Fund here.
Write letters to the editor working off of this guide from Fair Share America here.
Spread the message on social media with this toolkit from the Freedom Writers Collaborative and these images from The Century Foundation.

MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WILL SEE HEALTH INSURANCE COSTS SPIKE WITHOUT ACTION

The American Rescue Plan Act, pushed through by Democrats and President Biden without a single Republican vote, expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act – providing new financial assistance to 20 million people buying health coverage through the federal or state marketplaces in 2024. This program, an enhanced and advanced payment of the premium tax credit, has contributed to a record decline in the number of Americans without health insurance and has brought down costs by hundreds if not thousands of dollars for working folks – eligible enrollees saved an average of $705 a year.

After being extended through the Inflation Reduction Act, it is set to expire on December 31st without action, and we will start seeing the financial hit as soon as this summer when insurers start finalizing their 2026 rates. Democrats are planning to put up a fight, with Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Lauren Underwood reintroducing the Health Care Affordability Act (H.R. 247/S.46) to make this assistance permanent. This will not be an easy task, but we have to try for the sake of everyone who will have to pay much more or lose coverage altogether if nothing gets done – payments will go up by 75% on average, in 12 states people would see their premium payments literally double, and 4 million people will lose coverage altogether.

Let’s reach out to our members of Congress and let them know we endorse this bill and extending these subsidies permanently, and we want them to pass it as quickly as possible. We can find scripts and language here, or send this message via Resistbot by texting PXFVBW to 50409. We can also share with our networks this calculator from KFF that lets them see how much more they individually will pay if Congress lets the premium tax credits die.

DOWNLOAD CLIMATE ACTION NOW APP
Climate change is not waiting around for America to get its act together. An app put out by Climate Action Now has actions that we can do in minutes to help save the environment. This is even more crucial in the wake of Trump’s efforts to turn back much of what has already been done. Let’s download this app on our Apple and Android phones and start using it.

KEEPING AN EYE ON…

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